


(A) Lack Thereof

by randomlyimagine



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Agender Dairine, Because you can never have enough non-binary characters, Dairine has Research To Do, Dairine is annoyed she didn't see this coming, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Non-binary character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6231442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomlyimagine/pseuds/randomlyimagine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Dairine Callahan is not a fucking girl.</i>
</p>
<p>  <i>There. She’s said it. Once and for all let it be acknowledged.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	(A) Lack Thereof

**Author's Note:**

> Notes and more detailed warnings at the bottom.

Dairine Callahan is not a fucking girl.

There. She’s said it. Once and for all let it be acknowledged at least within the realm of her own mind that she is not a girl and probably never has been.

This isn’t about all the sexism and pink crap forced on her since she was a little girl—although she is and always has been pretty fed up with that too. This isn’t about the fact that her aunts all keep sending her pink berets and rhinestone-encrusted, ruffley tank tops. Nor is it about the fact that guys keep assuming she doesn’t know anything about programming or computers, that she’s not taking it seriously, it’s not about some “not like other girls” internalized misogyny crap.

It’s just about the fact that she isn’t a girl. It’s that simple.

And maybe she’s always known it, on some level, and just never had the vocabulary necessary to allow herself the mindset that would reveal her feelings, or maybe it’s been the result of a subtle evolution, or maybe Dairine just doesn’t know her soul and her past that well yet.

She hates not knowing things. She hates admitting to it even more. But it’s true. She doesn’t know. (Yet.)

All she knows is that throughout her life the word girl has often felt inaccurate—dissociated—not about her. Not painful, like all the personal narratives and confessions say, and maybe that’s part of why it’s taken her so long to figure this out. Just…off. Inaccurate.

_System Error: Category Not Found_ , she thinks to herself.

All she knows is that the word girl does not feel like it applies to her any more than the word boy does, which she had historically noted as a curiosity, given the fervency with which society insisted she was one and not the other. But she had brushed off that concern because she never really fit most of the labels people threw at her, and besides, why worry about gender roles she didn’t yet know weren’t fixed when there were _so many books to read?_

…She’s starting to think that maybe that dismissal was premature.

\----------------

Ten minutes ago she walked up to the mirror on the back of her bedroom door to try and figure out whether she wanted to change before leaving the house. And now she is still standing in front of the mirror, wearing a baggy Star Wars shirt and cargo pants and neutral red vans, and wishing that she had a pair of boxers on under the cargo pants and also kind of wishing she could take a knife to her chest and just make it _flat_ already.

She recognizes, distantly, that she doesn’t want to hurt herself. But each time she tries to look at her chest her brows furrow, she tenses up, she sees over and over every second she looks how much better it would be if it were flat.

This probably, she reflects, isn’t a normal thing for girls to be thinking.

And on the one hand, when the hell has she ever done normal?

But on the other hand the visceral discomfort, coupled with the knife glinting in her fist in her mind is—worrisome.

_Because I didn’t have enough unhappy shit to think about._ Faces (Mom, Rosh—) flash through her mind before she stamps them back down.

The other thing that probably isn’t “normal”: the way thinking of herself as a girl jars, like a slap in the face from someone she’d just met, like a chasm between herself (her?self) and the language she’s using.

She leans in closer to the mirror.

_I’m not a girl,_ she thinks, more tentative than she is facing down literal death.

_I’m not a girl,_ she thinks again, firmer, louder.

“I’m something else,” she whispers, and saying it—saying it is release, is realization, is anger from somewhere deep and confusing, maybe at what she has had to put up with or might have to put up with or herself for just not knowing or the world for stopping her from knowing.

The reflection in the mirror frowns. Dairine screams the newfound truth to the stars, inside her head, where Nita and her father won’t hear. She screams it and asserts it and asserts herself.

Gains the distance to reflect.

Maybe, she thinks, she should have seen this coming.

She thinks, and then she stops just thinking and starts downstairs to get Spot because Dairine _hates_ not knowing things, and damn if she doesn’t have some googling to do.

But her hand halts before it gets to the doorknob. She stares at it for a second. Then, holding her breath, she walks over to her desk and picks up a small gray wallet that contains, among other things, her library card.

Maybe there are some things she isn’t ready for _anyone_ to witness yet. Not even Spot.

She walks to the public library and sits that the most concealed computer as she can, buried in the back corner, nestled between walls of books and the hard wood of the desk. And she begins.

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Dairine experiences some dysphoria while staring at the mirror, mostly centered around having breasts. It's mostly mild dysphoria, but at one point, Dairine imagines using a knife to achieve a flat chest, although this isn't in any way seriously contemplated.
> 
> Also, I'm not addressing pronouns in this fic; given where I've placed Dairine in terms of education about the LGBTQ community, it seemed like too much too quickly. If I ever write a follow up, this might be addressed. But at the time this takes place, Dairine uses she pronouns. (Also, I am told Games Wizards Play features a non-binary character, but I haven't read it, so that isn't reflected here.)
> 
> Lastly, I am non-binary, but I am not agender (which is what Dairine is intended to be in this fic, but given that the character lacks that vocabulary at this point, it is ambiguous). If you are concerned about how I depict Dairine here, feel free to drop a line.


End file.
